Naming Roads in the Santa Cruz Mountains

Mtn. Charlie Road plaque, located where the road joins Summit Road at the Hwy 17 exit.

How did government agencies name roads in the Santa Cruz Mountains? A road might be named for a physical feature or location (Skyline Boulevard, Big Basin Highway – Hwy 9), or a person.

Quite a few roads in the Santa Cruz Mountains are named after people. Here are a few and some details:

Mountain Charlie Road. This narrow, twisty road straddling Hwy 17 is named after Charles Henry McKiernan. The toll road was purchased by Santa Cruz County in 1878. This earliest immigrant settler of the Santa Cruz Mountains survived a grizzly bear attack in 1854.

Schultheis Road. Named for John Martin Schultheis. I ride this mostly dirt road regularly between Redwood Lodge Road and Summit Road.

Page Mill Road. Named after William Page, who established a sawmill on Peters Creek in 1867.

Haskins Hill (Pescadero Road at Sam McDonald County Park). Named after Aaron Haskins, who built a shingle mill nearby in 1875.

Graham Hill Road (between Felton and Santa Cruz) was named for Isaac Graham, who owned this toll road in the 1860s-70s until it became a public thoroughfare.

Wurr Road (at Loma Mar). Named for Henry Wurr, a shingle mill operator originally from Germany.

Highland Way. Extending from the end of Summit Road to Eureka Canyon Road, I don’t know exactly how it came to be named, but there is an interesting coincidence here. It could be called Highland because the road is in high country. It could also be named for one M.C. Hyland.

He was the foreman on the ill-fated night of Feb. 12, 1877, when a terrific explosion killed at least a dozen workers who were building the Wrights tunnel on the South Pacific Coast Railroad. It’s just off Summit Road near Highland Way.

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